Why They Run From Police…

Audio ver­sion of article.

One age-old ques­tion asked when peo­ple try to run from the police, and things go wrong is, ‘why do they run’? The ques­tion ‘pre­tends’ not to under­stand the most basic instinct of all liv­ing species to be free.
If we set aside that pre­tense, in many cas­es, when some­one runs from the police, even if they are guilty of a crime, they stand a chance of get­ting away with it.….…at least in their mind at the time.
Years ago, I wrote an arti­cle about some of the per­ils law enforce­ment face in Jamaica, where I was engaged in law enforce­ment for a decade, not the least of which was the moun­tain­ous ter­rain. Even in cas­es of mur­der, if there are no eye­wit­ness­es to the crime, once the offend­er jumps into a gul­ly, he stands an almost 100% chance of get­ting away with that murder.
Why do they run? To under­stand why peo­ple run from law enforce­ment in the United States, we must first under­stand what law enforce­ment has been from its incep­tion to black Americans.
Let’s begin!!!
On the web­site of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the fol­low­ing paragraph.
The ori­gins of mod­ern-day polic­ing can be traced back to the “Slave Patrol.” The ear­li­est for­mal slave patrol was cre­at­ed in the Carolinas in the ear­ly 1700s with one mis­sion: to estab­lish a sys­tem of ter­ror and squash slave upris­ings with the capac­i­ty to pur­sue, appre­hend, and return run­away slaves to their own­ers. Tactics includ­ed using exces­sive force to con­trol and pro­duce desired slave behav­ior.
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PATROLLER’S OATH

“I [patroller’s name], do swear, that I will as searcher for guns, swords, and oth­er weapons among the slaves in my dis­trict, faith­ful­ly, and as pri­vate­ly as I can, dis­charge the trust reposed in me as the law directs, to the best of my pow­er. So help me, God.”
North Carolina Slave Patrol Oath.
https://mikebeckles.com/5‑fired-memphis-officers-charged-with-murder-in-death-of-tyre-nichols/

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The NAACP argues: By the 1900s, local munic­i­pal­i­ties began estab­lish­ing police depart­ments to enforce local laws in the East and Midwest, includ­ing Jim Crow laws. Local munic­i­pal­i­ties leaned on police to enforce and exert exces­sive bru­tal­i­ty on African Americans who vio­lat­ed any Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow Laws con­tin­ued through the end of the 1960s. End quote.

I’m afraid I have to dis­agree with the NAACP that Jim Crow Laws end­ed toward the end of the 1960s. Jim Crow laws and the method of enforce­ment remain to this day.
So for one to get an appre­ci­a­tion for why black peo­ple run from the police, one has to under­stand at least what polic­ing has been to black Americans as opposed to their white counterparts.
Black peo­ple run­ning from the police is an act of free­dom, just as the enslaved black peo­ple ran from the oppres­sive mon­stros­i­ty of slav­ery and the geno­ci­dal sys­tem that kept them enslaved.
To argue, ‘all they have to do is to com­ply with the police,’ is the most unique­ly white priv­i­leged thing to say. It cre­ates the false impres­sion that the sys­tem looks at blacks the same way as it does whites.
To assert that com­pli­ance with the police guar­an­tees equal and fair treat­ment is by itself steeped in either igno­rance or delusion.
To a young black male being stopped by the police, com­ply­ing could eas­i­ly mean being arrest­ed on trumped-up felony charges result­ing in years in prison for crimes they nev­er com­mit­ted. For them, flee­ing is the best recourse. As it was for their ances­tors flee­ing the slave patrols, it is equal­ly the same today; being caught has sim­i­lar con­se­quences, yes, even death.
For those of you who would come out the side of your faces to ques­tion the verac­i­ty of the lat­ter state­ment, tell it to Tyre Nichols.
The 13^th Amendment, which abol­ished slav­ery in the United States, pur­pose­ly retained a clause rein­forc­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of slavery.
Section 1: Neither slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude, except as a pun­ish­ment for crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed, shall exist with­in the United States or any place sub­ject to their juris­dic­tion. See, e.g., Clyatt v. United States, 197 U.S. 207, 215 (1905).
One does­n’t need a law degree from Harvard to rec­og­nize that slav­ery has not end­ed con­cep­tu­al­ly, based on sec­tion (1). To any young black male, whether he com­mit­ted a crime or not, being stopped by the police is a clear and present dan­ger of going into slavery.
It is not called slav­ery today; it is the prison indus­tri­al com­plex. Those who coined the lan­guage in sec­tion (1) of the 13^th Amendment were ful­ly aware of what they were doing in the lan­guage. ‘Except as a pun­ish­ment for crime,’ under­stand­ing that the mass incar­cer­a­tion of blacks would be the next iter­a­tion and con­tin­u­a­tion of the enslave­ment of black Americans.
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Many well-inten­tioned com­men­ta­tors on police vio­lence, includ­ing yours, tru­ly have, from time to time, argued that American polic­ing is bro­ken. Yes, in terms of how police offi­cers are sup­posed to oper­ate, it can rea­son­ably be argued it is broken.
In terms of the intent behind the way polic­ing was designed to work in the United States, it is work­ing exact­ly as modeled.
What makes it so offen­sive to the sen­si­bil­i­ties of con­sci­en­tious peo­ple is the grue­some bar­barism of it when it is held up to the light of scrutiny.
No one should be delu­sion­al about how police vio­lence is viewed among a large sub­set of the white com­mu­ni­ty, however.
Operating from the anonymi­ty of their key­boards, in group chats, and on mes­sage boards, a truer pic­ture of who they are emerges. From this ran­cid pool comes cops, pros­e­cu­tors, judges, politi­cians, and their sup­port­ers that stand in the way of reform.
When the laws are writ­ten to impact a par­tic­u­lar group direct­ly and enforced with the same mind­set, the results are what we have with the incar­cer­a­tion rate of blacks in the United States.
Scratching the sur­face of the defin­i­tive intent to lock up black Americans puts to rest the lie that blacks are more like­ly to com­mit crimes than whites who are not policed the same way.
Why do they run? For the major­i­ty of the key­board war­riors who pon­tif­i­cate about, ‘why do they run’? They dod not want and answer, their ques­tion is the point.
The next time you ask that ques­tion, remem­ber what you just read.
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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.